Increasing consumer sophistication has led to a desire for food manufacturers to provide food products of more striking appearance. A common method of improving the visual appeal of food products, especially in the field of confectionery manufacture, is to provide multi-component food products, for example multi-coloured confectionery pieces. In the following discussion, the term ‘multicoloured confectionery’ will be understood by persons skilled in the art to encompass confectionery that is made up of individual pieces of a single colour, such as ‘jelly beans’, and confectionery pieces that contain multiple colours within the same piece, such as the well-known multicoloured ‘snake’ candy.
Existing techniques for providing multicoloured confectionery pieces will now be discussed, however those skilled in the art will appreciate that the techniques discussed herein may equally be applied to other food product fields.
A typical production line for the production of multicoloured sugar-based confectionery pieces involves deposition of the confectionery material as syrup into starch moulds. Typically, the syrup is drawn from one or more supply hoppers into a deposition apparatus that includes syrup supply galleries extending from the hopper(s), a reciprocating positive displacement pump and valve system and a set of deposition nozzles bored through a nozzle plate. The positive displacement pump and valve system typically employs a multi-piston and cylinder device, but may equally be a rotary pump type.
The syrup is typically drawn into the supply galleries, which extend laterally across the deposition apparatus, by the pistons operating in a priming stroke. Then the syrup is forced by the pistons, in a discharge stroke, out of the supply galleries and downward through one or more of the nozzles in the nozzle plate, thereby depositing the syrup into a predetermined pre-formed mould cavity in the starch mould.
A number of individual dispensing vessels (ie hoppers) are typically positioned alongside and adjacent the inlet side of the deposition apparatus, and are typically configured to provide a single colour to a set group of galleries along each side of the depositor. Where multicoloured deposition is to be performed, a single, multi-compartment hopper vessel may also be used, each compartment then containing different coloured syrups. The multi-compartment hopper includes a storage vessel which extends along the inlet side of the deposition apparatus, and is divided at set intervals along its length by dividing walls that separate the different coloured syrups from one another. Each of the coloured syrups flow from the individual hopper compartments to the group of galleries immediately adjacent the division of the hopper containing that coloured syrup. Therefore, confectionery pieces of a given colour may only be deposited in the zone of the starch mould that is immediately adjacent the hopper compartment (or individual hopper vessel, if employed) that contains syrup of that colour.
The above described system works well for multicoloured products such as jelly beans, where many different coloured pieces are produced, but where individual pieces contain a single colour. However, if it is desired to manufacture pieces of confectionery, where each piece contains more than one colour, such equipment is not suitable as it is not capable of delivering individual colours to different zones throughout the starch mould.
A technique that is well known in the prior art for overcoming this drawback is the insertion of a distribution plate in between the supply galleries and the deposition nozzles. The distribution plate is typically a metal plate that has an intricate pattern of channels milled through it that are designed to direct flow of a particular coloured syrup from the zone in which it is available to the zone where it is required to be deposited.
However, a major drawback of this type of system is that for every different type or shape of product to be made there is required a different distribution plate. Each distribution plate tends to be bulky, intricate in design and difficult to manufacture. These plates are accordingly very expensive in terms of design, manufacturing and storage costs. They also tend to be very heavy and difficult to install and remove, increasing production downtime and presenting a health and safety risk to those operators whose job it is to change them between runs of different products.
In addition, the lengthy flow paths that are required in the distribution plate tend to produce variability in the deposit volume and therefore in the mass of individual pieces. This may cause an aesthetic problem with the confectionery pieces, as well as obliging the manufacturer to increase their product giveaway to account for the potential shortfall in product mass.